Friday, February 20, 2009
Saturday, April 19, 2008
the great eagle spirit
turns out the great eagle spirit was actually a fugitive trucker by the name of rich crenshaw...
today phil and i are meeting nick and jess for dinner while they pass through iowa city. they just quit their jobs in chicago and loaded all their shit into a uhaul to take to colorado to put into storage. From there they'll be flying down to ecuador on wednesday to start a two and a half month backpacking trip around south america. i'm incredibly excited for (read: jealous of) them. actually, i'm really proud of them. they've done a great job of staying cool/fun/adventurous post-marriage.
it's kind of ironic that i started a blog before embarking on an exciting 6-month trip backpacking through central america, but then failed to actually write anything in it until i was done with the trip and back to a boring life as a grad student in iowa. i really wish i could get myself to write more, especially during the times i really want to remember. hopefully most of those aren't already gone.
i'm doing a horrible job of starting my human rights paper today. writing papers can get really annoying. i think i spend more time trying to think of new synonyms for furthermore, additionally, and moreover than i do saying anything meaningful.
the counting crows concert on tuesday was fantastic. the setlist was nowhere near what i would have chosen but it didn't really matter because they are just so damn good live. It was one of the first times this spring that we had really nice weather, so we had a mini tailgate at my place beforehand complete with grilling, beer, bags, and of course counting crows. it was a pretty good night for a tuesday.
today phil and i are meeting nick and jess for dinner while they pass through iowa city. they just quit their jobs in chicago and loaded all their shit into a uhaul to take to colorado to put into storage. From there they'll be flying down to ecuador on wednesday to start a two and a half month backpacking trip around south america. i'm incredibly excited for (read: jealous of) them. actually, i'm really proud of them. they've done a great job of staying cool/fun/adventurous post-marriage.
it's kind of ironic that i started a blog before embarking on an exciting 6-month trip backpacking through central america, but then failed to actually write anything in it until i was done with the trip and back to a boring life as a grad student in iowa. i really wish i could get myself to write more, especially during the times i really want to remember. hopefully most of those aren't already gone.
i'm doing a horrible job of starting my human rights paper today. writing papers can get really annoying. i think i spend more time trying to think of new synonyms for furthermore, additionally, and moreover than i do saying anything meaningful.
the counting crows concert on tuesday was fantastic. the setlist was nowhere near what i would have chosen but it didn't really matter because they are just so damn good live. It was one of the first times this spring that we had really nice weather, so we had a mini tailgate at my place beforehand complete with grilling, beer, bags, and of course counting crows. it was a pretty good night for a tuesday.
Friday, April 11, 2008
21 things
awhile back i was asked to write 20 things about myself. this is a slightly modified version. and i ended up with 21.
1. i'm a big fan of aerobies because they fly so much farther than regular frisbees, but the worst part about them is that they sink. i've lost at least 10 of them in my lifetime, probably more. they have fallen victim to bodies of water all over the world, including lake michigan, both domestic oceans, the mediteranean sea, the red sea, the caribbean sea, and a lot of lakes throughout the midwest. i think losing an aerobie in the nearest body of water has become something of a right of passage for me when i travel.
2. i can never tell exactly how selfish i am (but i'm always fairly certain that i am quite selfish). i wish i was less selfish, and at times, it seems like i might be.
3. as a general rule, i'm confident about things i shouldn't be, and i'm not confident about things i should be.
4. one of my favorite things is change/newness--this applies to surroundings much more than company but sometimes includes both.
5. i must fight the urge to climb every tall thing i see. my favorite mood is when i don't fight that urge.
6. my best friend and i used to hit each other with my station wagon for fun...until we broke the windshield with his arm. it wouldn't have happened if he had used proper form. and yeah, i drove a $100 station wagon in college.
7. i'm rarely sure of exactly what i think about anything specific.
8. i frequently hate the passage of time. also, i really wish i could believe in reincarnation. that just sounds like a really cool thing to believe in.
9. i sometimes consider myself to be the absolute authority on humor.
10. i can't wait until the first time i can look around and not see any land.
11. i love the existence of so many choices but i have a very hard time with the permanence of my decisions...and i hate big decisions unless i can make them impulsively.
12. i love planning unconventional dates.
13. my favorite word is "waft."
14. i LOVE storms. especially tornadoes. for some reason they still don't seem all that dangerous to me. whenever there is a tornado warning, i get in my car to go looking for funnel clouds.
15. i've had an inexplicable obsession with the idea of sailing for a decade, and a couple years ago i bought a shitty 26 foot sailboat on an impulse. my friend and i lived on it for half a summer and attempted, but failed miserably, to sail down the pacific coast of mexico. i had set foot on a sailboat once in my life prior to that summer.
16. i have a hard time getting close to people, but i'm fortunate to have one of the best best friends in the world.
17. i tend to get really passionate about incredibly random things when i'm drunk. i've had intense conversations about topics such as hockey in space, using sinkholes as a storytelling device, and alarm clocks that use the sound of gunfire and shattering glass to keep people from being groggy when they wake up.
18. i was inadvertently roofied in alaska when i drank a stray drink to save money. fortunately, i was not taken advantage of.
19. i say that i value truth more than happiness. this may or may not be true.
20. i had a fantastic childhood. my neighbors had this giant, amazing yard that i swear had all four climate zones. my childhood involved a lot of forts, homemade weapons, and zip lines.
21. i feel like an almost unimaginably different person than i was 6 years ago.
1. i'm a big fan of aerobies because they fly so much farther than regular frisbees, but the worst part about them is that they sink. i've lost at least 10 of them in my lifetime, probably more. they have fallen victim to bodies of water all over the world, including lake michigan, both domestic oceans, the mediteranean sea, the red sea, the caribbean sea, and a lot of lakes throughout the midwest. i think losing an aerobie in the nearest body of water has become something of a right of passage for me when i travel.
2. i can never tell exactly how selfish i am (but i'm always fairly certain that i am quite selfish). i wish i was less selfish, and at times, it seems like i might be.
3. as a general rule, i'm confident about things i shouldn't be, and i'm not confident about things i should be.
4. one of my favorite things is change/newness--this applies to surroundings much more than company but sometimes includes both.
5. i must fight the urge to climb every tall thing i see. my favorite mood is when i don't fight that urge.
6. my best friend and i used to hit each other with my station wagon for fun...until we broke the windshield with his arm. it wouldn't have happened if he had used proper form. and yeah, i drove a $100 station wagon in college.
7. i'm rarely sure of exactly what i think about anything specific.
8. i frequently hate the passage of time. also, i really wish i could believe in reincarnation. that just sounds like a really cool thing to believe in.
9. i sometimes consider myself to be the absolute authority on humor.
10. i can't wait until the first time i can look around and not see any land.
11. i love the existence of so many choices but i have a very hard time with the permanence of my decisions...and i hate big decisions unless i can make them impulsively.
12. i love planning unconventional dates.
13. my favorite word is "waft."
14. i LOVE storms. especially tornadoes. for some reason they still don't seem all that dangerous to me. whenever there is a tornado warning, i get in my car to go looking for funnel clouds.
15. i've had an inexplicable obsession with the idea of sailing for a decade, and a couple years ago i bought a shitty 26 foot sailboat on an impulse. my friend and i lived on it for half a summer and attempted, but failed miserably, to sail down the pacific coast of mexico. i had set foot on a sailboat once in my life prior to that summer.
16. i have a hard time getting close to people, but i'm fortunate to have one of the best best friends in the world.
17. i tend to get really passionate about incredibly random things when i'm drunk. i've had intense conversations about topics such as hockey in space, using sinkholes as a storytelling device, and alarm clocks that use the sound of gunfire and shattering glass to keep people from being groggy when they wake up.
18. i was inadvertently roofied in alaska when i drank a stray drink to save money. fortunately, i was not taken advantage of.
19. i say that i value truth more than happiness. this may or may not be true.
20. i had a fantastic childhood. my neighbors had this giant, amazing yard that i swear had all four climate zones. my childhood involved a lot of forts, homemade weapons, and zip lines.
21. i feel like an almost unimaginably different person than i was 6 years ago.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Interesting habits
Today I stumbled across and downloaded an old screensaver that I loved when I was a kid - Johnny Castaway, by Screen Antics. It features a castaway stuck on a single palm tree island who occupies his time with various activities such as fishing, eating coconuts, building a fire, swimming, bathing, building a raft, doing a rain dance, dressing up in tribal gear, failing to see most of the boats and planes that pass by (although he does manage to take down a low flying plane with a coconut while trying to get its attention), and various encounters with a mermaid. Evidently this screensaver still has a little following out there - http://www.gnudawn.co.uk/johnny/ ...in case you want to download it or learn more about the crazy things johnny does (there are some pretty random ones out there that are apparently very rare).
I would like to be castaway for a week or so, maybe even a month. I really think I'd enjoy that. Honestly, I've always kind of wanted to be in a survival situation. That probably sounds like a reckless and stupid thing to be wishing for, but there it is. I think that's initially why I loved LOST so much. Speaking of which, I'm sick of not having that to look forward to on Wednesday nights.
Another unproductive thing I did today (and do from time to time) is research cities around America. I think if I ever actually do finish school, I might be better served to have some targets when the daunting job hunt looms before me. And especially now that I'm going to study urban and regional planning, I like looking for smaller but growing cities that would be fun to be a part of. All of the cities I look at are on the coast, and I usually end up spending the majority of my time checking how many marinas they have and how much slip fees are, since I still like to think I'm going to live on a sailboat someday.
Anyway, the city I was looking at today was Cape Coral, Florida. I don't really know much about it yet but it has exactly what I'm looking for in terms of geography and climate, and apparently the entire city is crisscrossed with over 200 miles of canals! Just something to remember. I think the whole Caribbean coast of Florida seems like it could be really cool, except that it's probably full of old people. But living on a sailboat with the Caribbean as your front yard? Are you kidding me?
I would like to be castaway for a week or so, maybe even a month. I really think I'd enjoy that. Honestly, I've always kind of wanted to be in a survival situation. That probably sounds like a reckless and stupid thing to be wishing for, but there it is. I think that's initially why I loved LOST so much. Speaking of which, I'm sick of not having that to look forward to on Wednesday nights.
Another unproductive thing I did today (and do from time to time) is research cities around America. I think if I ever actually do finish school, I might be better served to have some targets when the daunting job hunt looms before me. And especially now that I'm going to study urban and regional planning, I like looking for smaller but growing cities that would be fun to be a part of. All of the cities I look at are on the coast, and I usually end up spending the majority of my time checking how many marinas they have and how much slip fees are, since I still like to think I'm going to live on a sailboat someday.
Anyway, the city I was looking at today was Cape Coral, Florida. I don't really know much about it yet but it has exactly what I'm looking for in terms of geography and climate, and apparently the entire city is crisscrossed with over 200 miles of canals! Just something to remember. I think the whole Caribbean coast of Florida seems like it could be really cool, except that it's probably full of old people. But living on a sailboat with the Caribbean as your front yard? Are you kidding me?
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Back to the grind...
I'm back in class for the post spring break push. Should be an interesting one--I don't have a lot of exams this semester but I have some serious paper-writing to do and I'm absurdly behind in one class. Get that gun to my head so I can finally be productive.
Had a good spring break hiking the appalachian trail in Georgia with my friend Matt Brown and then visiting the fam in Michigan and Chicago. In Georgia this time of year all the hikers you meet proudly refer to themselves as thru-hikers (indicating an intent to spend 6 months hiking the entire 2,000+ mile length of the trail) but I think half of them quit in the first week or two and very very few end up hiking the whole thing. This unlikelihood, however, does not keep them from looking down on the lowly "sectioners" like me and brown, who were only there for a 5-day stint. They're also obsessed with "trail names" which are basically just monikers that they like to identify themselves with exclusively during their trip. Trail names are generally supposed to be given to you by fellow hikers on the basis of something stupid or memorable you do. They can be anything at all (including very stupid), from Gonzo to Mighty Thor to The Way Seeker. On the first day we met a girl who introduced herself very earnestly as Lotus. There were two guys hiking with her and I'm pretty sure both them were seeking access to her lotus patch. We passed a surprising amount of our time hiking by mocking Lotus and her many suiters.
Naturally wanting to fit in, Brown and I frequently pretended to be thru-hikers as well and took on trail names of our own. I was of course the legendary Appalachian Ninja, due to my many Ninja-like characteristics (cunning wit, tempestuous quickness, proclivity for lightning-fast flashes of capricious violence, etc.). Brown was Merman (emphasis to be placed on man in Zoolander fashion), because of his keen affinity with the very abundant rainwater we were blessed with on the first day. His oneness with the wetness is truly awe-inspiring. While it might seem like complete misery and relentless complaining to the untrained eye, I saw it for what it really was. He did get a little crabby when it started hailing for a spell, but I can only assume that was because he was afraid of drying. In his defense, his raincoat was torn to shreds within the first half hour of hiking, but he's the one who fell like 4 times.
Appalachian Ninja sighting/attack (we enjoyed using the panoramic function to put ourselves into photos multiple times):
Thursday, March 13, 2008
unclehood
Both of my nieces are absurdly cute (I'm not counting the 3-month-old yet because babies all look the same to me). They're the kind of blond-haired blue-eyed kids that prompt total strangers to stop their mothers on the street to tell them how beautiful their kid is. And they're really fun to hang out with for an uncle. I love being an uncle. It's like all the perks of being a parent and none of the nasty responsibilities. I get to hang out with my nieces and nephew when they're being fun and adorable, and then hand them off to their parents when they're being snotty little brats. I don't mean to call them brats, because they aren't at all, but lets face it, every kid can be a brat sometimes. Hell, so can I.My to-do list for the next 12 months:
go to cedar point
snowboard
donate money to kiva.org
use the kayak that i bought after my freshman year of college and only used once
hike some more appalachian trail
visit D.C. and new york
buy a moped
vote for barack obama
start an obscure holiday
build a human powered flying machine for red bull flugtag
write a short story
go sailing again
run a half-marathon, maybe a triathalon
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
retooling
i just renamed my blog. apparently i like very literal titles. anyway, i think i might also retool this thing into an actual blog, as opposed to just a rarely used online journal that no one even knows about. for now i'm going to use it as an idea box.
so, some things i think are awesome right now:
1) the red bull flugtag contest, which you can enter by proposing and then building a human powered flying machine. it doesn't actually have to fly, since the most competitive category is most original/showmanship. most teams just build a giant cow or banjo or drumstick and one person rides it while the rest push it off a cliff into some body of water. i think this is one of the coolest ideas ever and i plan to enter it someday.
2) the fact that there is a random stuffed wolf that will stare you down from a display window in an alley one block off the main street of hinton, iowa that very few people know about.
3) www.kiva.org
if all goes according to plan, i'm going to hike the georgia portion of the appalachian trail over spring break with a buddy. i'm really excited - it's been far too long since i've done some serious hiking. i think being out of touch with everything for a week or so is exactly what i need right now.
so, some things i think are awesome right now:
1) the red bull flugtag contest, which you can enter by proposing and then building a human powered flying machine. it doesn't actually have to fly, since the most competitive category is most original/showmanship. most teams just build a giant cow or banjo or drumstick and one person rides it while the rest push it off a cliff into some body of water. i think this is one of the coolest ideas ever and i plan to enter it someday.
2) the fact that there is a random stuffed wolf that will stare you down from a display window in an alley one block off the main street of hinton, iowa that very few people know about.
3) www.kiva.org
if all goes according to plan, i'm going to hike the georgia portion of the appalachian trail over spring break with a buddy. i'm really excited - it's been far too long since i've done some serious hiking. i think being out of touch with everything for a week or so is exactly what i need right now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)